Abstract
Anderson argues that Indigenous writers in the South as elsewhere make occasional, not extensive, forays into the Gothic. Native Southern ghost and monster stories typically eschew or downplay Euro-American gothic conventions in favor of haunts that foster anti-colonial critique as well as Indigenous community. Similarly, Indigenous writing in and of the South often downplays ‘Southern’ as a meaningful category of identity. Indigenous hauntings raise the Indigenous undead in ways that acknowledge difficulty, tension, uncertainty, trauma, and loss, but that also affirm Native presences and staying power. Discussing a Cherokee oral story, a poem by Joy Harjo, and various other texts, Anderson demonstrates that raising the Indigenous undead is ultimately less a frightening than a hopeful endeavor.
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Notes
- 1.
The number of likes, and the number of members in the Lumbee-focused group also discussed, are current as of 6 August 2015.
- 2.
Readers interested in a more extended discussion of the problem of genre in Indigenous American literatures might consult my essay “Situating American Indian Poetry: Place, Community, and the Question of Genre,” in Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry, eds. Dean Rader and Janice Gould (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003), 34–55.
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Further Reading
Anderson, E. G., Taylor, H., & Daniel Cross, T. (Eds.). (2015). Undead Souths: The gothic and beyond in southern literature and culture. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. This collection explores and expands traditional notions of Southern Gothic, moving across historical periods and genres to reveal a wide-ranging Southern ‘undeadness.’ Sustained discussions of Native Southern undeadness can be found in “Burying the (Un)Dead and Healing the Living: Choctaw Women’s Power in LeAnne Howe’s Novels” by Kirstin L. Squint, “The Indigenous Uncanny: Spectral Genealogies in LeAnne Howe’s Fiction” byAnnette Trefzer, and “Crossin’ the Log: Death, Regionality, and Race in Jeremy Love’s Bayou” by Rain Prud’homme C. Goméz (Choctaw-Biloxi, Louisiana Creole, and Mvskoke).
del Pilar Blanco, M. (2012). Ghost-watching American modernity: Haunting, landscape, and the hemispheric imagination. New York: Fordham University Press. Although not specifically about the US South, this study brilliantly reconceptualizes how ghosts, hauntings, and by extension the Gothic work in space and place.
Thrush, C., & Boyd, C. E. (Eds.). (2011). Phantom past, indigenous presence: Native ghosts in North American culture and history. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. A well-conceived collection that complements and supplements Bergland’s work.
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Anderson, E.G. (2016). Raising the Indigenous Undead. In: Castillo Street, S., Crow, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Southern Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47774-3_25
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